Mr. Pinnix was born and raised in Oxford, N.C. After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1949 with a bachelor's degree in accounting, he moved to New York City when he took an accounting position with Texaco Oil Co.

He lived in Puerto Rico and Dakar, Senegal, before leaving Texaco and moving to Baltimore in 1955, when he went to work as an assistant vice president for Mercantile Safe Deposit and Trust Co.

In the early 1980s, he left the bank and became a group manager and senior financial analyst at Alexander and Alexander, now AON Corp., where he worked until retiring in 1992.

Mr. Pinnix was also a consultant to the World Bank and the Excess Line Association of New York, a quasi-state government agency that regulates certain types of insurance operations in the state of New York.

He was the author of Insurance in the United States: A Handbook for Professionals, published in 1993, and a co-author of Practical Security Analysis.

Mr. Pinnix was a longtime volunteer with the Helping Up Mission in Baltimore, where he tutored men recovering from alcohol and drug addiction in reading, writing and math.

He was a lifelong fan of the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and was a member of the Six Napoleons of Baltimore, a scion society of the Baker Street Irregulars.

Mr. Pinnix enjoyed listening to opera, reading, watching college football and travel. He had visited more than 50 countries and was fluent in Spanish and French.

Services are private.

Surviving are his wife of 50 years, the former Sarah Virginia Costin; a son, Marshall H. Pinnix Jr. of Tustin, Calif.; a daughter, Valerie P. Spencer of Perry Hall; and five grandchildren.